Judge asked to toss CIA identity suit

November 15, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney asked a federal judge Tuesday to dismiss a lawsuit brought against him by a former CIA operative who says the White House leaked her identity to the press. Cheney's attorneys criticized the lawsuit in court papers, saying it invented constitutional rights, intruded on national security discussions and came two years after the statute of limitations had expired. Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson claims that she was outed as retribution for her husband's criticism of the administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent years investigating who revealed her identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in 2003 but nobody was charged with the leak. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who faces trial in January on perjury and obstruction, is the only person charged in the case. Wilson's civil lawsuit is continuing alongside Libby's criminal case. In seeking to dismiss the case, Cheney said Wilson doesn't have any grounds to bring the suit and, even if she did, the vice president is shielded from civil suits. The suit centers on conversations between Cheney and Libby about Plame's job at the CIA. "Plaintiffs invite the judicial branch to permit intrusive discovery into those communications and to discern which among them might be, as a matter of tort law, wrongful and which not," Cheney's attorneys wrote. "Such an inquiry cannot be squared with basic separation of powers principles." The Justice Department also weighed in on behalf of Cheney. In briefs, the agency said government officials are shielded from civil lawsuits and that Wilson has not shown that a constitutional right was violated. Libby also asked that the lawsuit be dismissed.